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World’s Most Murderous Dictator Thrives

Except primarily for the ironhanded rulers in Russia and China,
the most despised global dictator is President Bashar al-Assad of
Syria, who is inflicting monstrous genocide on his own people. As
usual, the United Nations is useless. But meanwhile, another
monster is thriving, someone who has killed and starved to death
hundreds of thousands more of his people than al-Assad.

President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has had arrest warrants issued
against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on counts of
war crimes, crimes against humanity and, yes, genocide.
Swashbuckingly unintimidated, al-Bashir is making initial martial
moves against recently independent South Sudan that could bring
back the years of horrors he unleashed in the country as a whole,
including Darfur in the west.

In the past, the U.N. issued paper resolutions of concern and
helped negotiate the now continually vulnerable independence of
South Sudan. However, as al-Bashir’s Army continues to rape and
murder, creating omens of a renewed civil war, the U.N. is silent,
as are nations that have demonstrated concern about human rights,
including Barack Obama’s United States.

And just about everywhere, the rushing media is otherwise
occupied. But, as I expected, the most courageous American
investigative reporter, The New York Times’ Nicholas
Kristof, has been writing from the remote, almost inaccessible Nuba
Mountains of Sudan.

As he reported on June 3 (“Starving Its Own Children”): “Sudan
bars outsiders, but I sneaked in from South Sudan on a dirt track
controlled by rebels. Since my last visit in February, the
situation in these areas has deteriorated sharply: a large share of
families have run completely out of food, with no prospect of more
until the next harvest in November.”

A 28-year-old mother, Katum Tutu, told Kristof that she
“recently lost her 2-year-old daughter, Maris, to starvation and
has nothing to feed her four remaining children.”

In a June 7 report (“If Only Our Leaders Had Mariam’s Guts”),
Kristof introduced “a valiant woman here, Mariam Tia, to President
Obama and other world leaders, so she could explain how they’re
allowing Sudan’s leaders to get away with mass atrocities that echo
Darfur …

“Mariam was pregnant when the Sudanese Army invaded her village
here in the rebel-held Nuba Mountains and shot her husband dead…
She eventually relocated to a dank mountain cave, where —
like countless other Nubians — she felt a bit safer from
random bombings by government warplanes.

“When her due date came two months ago, Mariam delivered her
baby by herself inside the cave. She named her baby girl Fakao,
which is shorthand for: bombs are dropping…

“ ‘I named her this so that I could remember the struggle we went
through to give her life. If I ever see the enemy again, I will tie
this baby to my back and pick up a gun and fight them.’”

Indeed, with no outside help to wait for, why not show some
self-respect? Even if the rest of the world isn’t listening and
watching.

Another woman, Hasia al-Ahmar, told Kristof “that her mother had
starved to death and then the government dropped a bomb that landed
directly on the family’s grass-roof mud hut, with her sister
inside.

“ ‘We could just pick up little pieces of her and put them in a
plastic bag,’ she said. ‘And then we buried the bag.’”

In his June 3 report, Kristof wrote: “World leaders are mostly
turning a blind eye.”

Which leader isn’t?

“There isn’t even serious talk about damaging the military
airstrips that Sudan’s warplanes take off from before dropping
bombs on civilians, or about forcing a humanitarian corridor, or
about arranging airdrops of food.”

He then brought President Obama into a grass-roof mud hut:
“President Obama, you harshly criticized President Bush for failing
to stand up to Sudan’s slaughter in Darfur. So now what are you
going to do as Sudan kills again — on your watch?”

I, too, have often asked George W. Bush and Obama that question
during the years of columns I’ve written on Darfur. I have credited
evangelical Christians who often urgently told President Bush that
to end the killings and starvation, he must lead the campaign
personally.

But where are the evangelicals now? What about the Jewish groups
that have formerly petitioned Bush and Obama?

I kept pressuring Obama to remember what he said during his
campaign for the presidency; that “the mass rapes and killings
orchestrated by Gen. al-Bashir had left a ‘stain on our souls.’